Citation Needed - Fyre Festival

Episode Date: July 22, 2020

Fyre Festival was a fraudulent luxury music festival founded by Billy McFarland, CEO of Fyre Media Inc, and rapper Ja Rule. It was created with the intent of promoting the company's Fyre app for booking music talent. The festival was scheduled to take place on April 28–30 and May 5–7, 2017, on the Bahamian island of Great Exuma. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details. Additional music for this episode from  https://www.bensound.com

I mean, do these people think Lin Manuel Miranda isn't aware that Alexander Hamilton and George Washington were problematic? For the third time, I agree with you. Because the show isn't about Alexander Hamilton, it's about the American experience. It's about the experience. It's about the experience. Have a look. You said the experience before, you said the experience.

Oh god, what did you do? Don't look at me. I had nothing to do with this. See, so. See, so, oh my god, I'm so do? Don't look at me, I had nothing to do with this. Cecil! Cecil, oh my god, I'm so glad you're here, buddy. Tom! Tom!

Tom! Tom! Tom! Tom! Cecil! You made it! Cecil's here! Tom!

Cecil's here! Tom! Cecil's here! Guys, what is this? Guys, what are you doing? What is this? I'm talking! I see him. Yeah, it was Tom's idea.

It's called citation best. It's got dancing and models and drugs. It's going to hude. Seriously? Seriously? So much. Oh, yeah, man. Oh, you see that old gentleman in the corner.

What? Yes. That's the top hand model in the world in 1997. Top guys in the world, baby in the world. Chris, Chris, I'm Joe Cicil. You're fucking hands, man. You can't hear me. I'm not sure.

I don't think that's the kind of model people want. Joe's a Juno. Idiot. Yeah, they do. OK. Chris, the hand model. Honestly. Model people want. Ha! Shows a d'you know? Idiot. Yeah, they do. Okay. Alright, Chris, the hand model. Honestly, this isn't your worst idea.

I just can't believe Noah was down for this. Where is he anyway? Oh, he's selling Molly in the bathroom. Selling Molly in the bathroom. Yep, Molly in the bathroom. Which bathroom? You're not allowed. Molly, a the back. Which bathroom? You're not allowed. Molly, a hand model too? Hello Ed, welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose to subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet

and that's how it works now. I'm knowing I'm going to be hosting this disaster, but to open an audience I'm gonna need some influencers first up to men who still remember when Instagram just meant that your Coke dealer was fast Cecil and me Hey, let's grab an eight ball and get high over at my space, huh? Thank you Cecil eight, but like he'd better be fast if you're buying a gram at a time. What the fuck? I'm like, 45 seconds later, he's gonna call back. Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. No, kill him, kill him. Kill him.

And also joining us tonight, two men who think that living a high life is a blood pressure related expression, Eli and Tom. Okay, mine's actually so high that if I ever slip my wrists, I go flying around the room like a balloon. It's pretty funny. It's pretty funny. It's pretty funny.

It's pretty funny. You know, if you're living the life well enough, there's no meaningful difference, actually. It's just, all right, no, let's get there. One will be got the other. I'm not there. All right, so before we dive any deeper into this week's topic, I want to emphasize to our listeners that there are a lot of ways to make money on the internet

and compared to most of them, pretending you're an expert is downright wholesome. Luckily, there are just enough people supporting this show to keep us from exploring our other options. So far. And if you like to have options, you're fucking on my pit, you're fucking on the pit. Also, if you'd like to help keep it that way, be sure to stick around to the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us Eli, what person-place thing concept phenomenon or event will we be talking about today? We'll be talking about 2016's yearbook picture, the fire festival.

All right. So, Tom, you read the article article and by read the article, I mean, watched most of a Netflix documentary. And by watched most of a Netflix documentary, of course, I mean, convincingly pretended to listen to the documentary that your wife was watching. Are you ready to leave this sort of tale for us? You actually cannot possibly imagine how excited I am to tell this story, no. And to be fair, I had no idea there was a documentary about this until after I was read most of the article,

and then I found out there were two documentaries. Yes, and which I watched both of, and they were amazing. Awesome. All right, so where does it all begin? All right, well, to tell this story, we have to go back to a simpler time, not a particularly good time, though. The year was 2016 and it was December.

The world was still struggling desperately to figure out what had just happened the month prior, and the generation known as the millennials were coming into their own, just not politically. Definitely not that. Anyway, millennials, those Americans born between 1980 and 1995 were really the first generation whose experiences were defined by and through a ceaseless connection to personal and personalized media.

Say what you will, but when I was six, the highlight magazine was addressed to me personally. Me. It came in the mail today. Damn right. Damn right, Cecil. And even though they didn't use my name, the goofish and galant cartoons were addressed to me. Turns out that my internet was mostly personalized for me to argue with Nazis until my mental health gave out in 2016. It was a weird

feature. And I just say it's weird. It's not personalized. That's just the internet. Yeah. That's everybody's weird. It's not personalized. That's just the internet. Yeah. That's everybody's experience. So this connection with the world intimate and curated, not just by them, but also importantly for them made millennials the perfect target for an old scheme dressed in way doucheier clothing. Thus was born fire festival the self evidently bullshit Ponzi scheme the party that could not have been and never was The perfect storm of shot in Freud and self-right just come up in I promise you guys if there was ever a story Designed for citation needed this is that story. Okay, Tom But somebody better die a radiation poison that story. Okay, Tom, but somebody better die a radiation poisoning.

And it's maybe not over. There might be a radiation poisoning. I have some nominees. Yeah. So we have to actually begin this three of fire festival spelled by the way with a why and fire you as if you purpose. Yeah, right. I guess that's what makes it hip and edgy.

I guess is to misspell common words. It's fucking stupid. We got to start with Billy McFarland. So Billy McFarland was born in 1991 to ultra wealthy real estate developer parents in New Jersey, though one does struggle to imagine what real estate is worth developing in New Jersey. New Jersey is New York's Indiana Tom. Okay.

The last Illinois is Indiana's New Jersey's New York. Like, the most interesting Illinois's TV spot and they get things big. New York stuff. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I can't hear you. I was picking penne off my pizza here. What were you saying?

So from the very start, it was embarrassing that she was a born grip. I his own admission, he started his first business in grade school, selling whole crayons for a dollar to kids whose crayons had broken. Business which he advertised by hacking into the rudimentary desktop computers the kids used and sending out messages promoting his crann replacement racket. Krapodantic financial reference. A box of eight cranns right now at office depot is 59 cents.

That's about $0.7 a crann. You adjust that back for inflation. The box of cranns would have been about 30 cents. So each crann was worth about $0.04 individually. Billy was selling individual crannans at 25 times their cost to rich kids spending their parents money in order to avoid the pain of not having exactly what they wanted right fucking now. So smart. I'm not saying Billy had his finger on the financial zeitgeist of a generation. He could take his fucking pulse from across the room. Also a great experience for his current job

of selling cigarettes at 25 times markup. He's in jail. He's in jail. He's in jail for insulin sales too. I understand that. So what he was 13 while as he put it, the other kids were out playing kickball, he created another business,

the business connected websites and web designers, which is a mostly bland part of the story except that most of the websites were porn a graphic and his entire web design team was an outsourced Indian workforce that he literally talked to in a fake deep voice when he had to call them. She didn't realize that he was 13 years old. Did he stand on stills?

And like, you watch this guy in interviews. He takes the case on his phone. He's on a Zoom call on his friend's shoulder. Hello, normal night, I am tall. What? He's on two of his friends in the wall wearing a trench coat to hide under David, like Scooby do. Yeah.

In interviews, he seems totally unaware that getting your start by lying to people about who you are in order to exploit people overseas to further an exploitative industry is in fact capital. Capitalism. Okay. But also not something to brag about. Manifest destiny. I'm sorry, he was pitching website design to porn sites at 13.

I feel like most of them should have seen through that Um, hello is this the office of Kittjobs.com Yeah, who am I speaking to? My name is John Smith. Have you considered your web design needs? Yeah, kind of well how, how so? What do you mean? You know how your website has boobies on it? Uh-huh, yeah. Well, I could design it so that the boobies look better and stuff.

Oh. Okay. What's that going to cost? I mean, you could pay me in pictures of boobies, pictures of boobies. Right. Okay, let me ask you something. John Smith, how old are you? Exactly. Oh, I'm a grown-up. I have a car and a girlfriend. She's got the biggest boobs in the world actually. Oh, okay, well, we are porn sites. So I actually 100% believe you now. Let's talk business.

Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! More verification than most porn sites have ever done. So Billy went on to Bucknell University, safety school, really? Safety school, you went to NYU and you spelled safety wrong. You went to Columbia's Literal Safety School downtown. So Billy dropped out before completing

his freshman year in order to concentrate on his new horrible idea Spling Spling which you don't know about because it was a fucking failure was a content sharing ad platform And I watched him try to show a crowd a demo of this thing it failed miserably in the demo And it was also seriously one of the most visually hideous things that I have ever seen online Since two girls shared one cup of steamy brown romance So seriously, one of the most visually hideous things that I have ever seen online since two girls shared one cup of steamy brown romance. For reasons that to fight anyone's understanding, spling got a decent amount of attention and

McFarlane moved from Philadelphia to New York to work on it. Ah, the dot com bubble, right? That glorious moment in American history, we're returning the entire economy over to everybody's couch surfing, libertarian cousin. So unfortunately for Billy McFarland, not long after moving to New York, Google Plus launched. Now we all know now that Google Plus ended up being a big flop as well. But if you're in a flop contest with Google, they're pretty much going to suck all the air right out of that room, right? with Google, they're pretty much gonna suck all the air right out of that room, right? So McFarland was not beaten, not by a long shot. Hanging out with a bunch of over-privileged douche bros in New York and living the life

got McFarland to thinking about new, stupid ideas. And thoughts was born, I fucking love this thing, Magnesis. Ooh. Magnesis is fucking amazing. This is a debit card for 20 somethings who wear hats indoors, right? Bored from the idea, and I swear to God that I'm not making any of this up, that the only thing that is generation carried that quote,

didn't represent who you were was your debit card. What? McFarland created Magnesis, a debit card, and unintentional portmanteau of Magnum and Venus. After I read that, I thought it was Eli trying to spell magazines. I can't believe that. Magnuses.

What's in your meat wallet? That's great. That's what you need. A penis themed debit card. Asshole. All right, so pause for just a moment and try to think of something more fucking prosaic and uninspiring than your goddamn debit card.

Right. I mean, it's a checkbook that just gets put in the same machine as a credit card machine, right? Like, now imagine a sexy debit card. you. Yeah. So it might be struggling. All right. If you're struggling, that's because you are not a visionary like Billy McFarlane. And Heath. And Heath, evidently. The Magnesis card took the boring old debit card and supercharged its libido until it oozed sex appeal. First, it was black and black and flimsy plastic and just whatever color. Second, not just anyone could have one, that's ridiculous. That's not how sexy works.

The Magnesis card is a card you had to apply for in person in an interview and they asked hard-hitting questions like, what do you like to do for fun in New York City and where do you like to shop? And then if you went to the right school and you came from the right background, you would get invited to a party at a very nice townhouse that Magnesis rented and made available to its members. And I guess after like interview partying, the Magnesis board of douchebags would meet and decide if you were elite enough to pay them between $250 and $450 to have your existing card. Oh my god. There's a black metal rectangle version of the same fucking card. That fucking sexy.

Well, you have to say it slower and breathier, but yes. You're debit card shattering into pieces and birth to be a better way. Just metal rectangle and magnesis. Yeah. 100% true story. I was booked to perform magic at the magnesis house with some magic friends, and the show that we did there was the Fire Festival of Lauf Parties. They had sold a hundred more tickets than they could fit people into the space. Oh god. They only bought a single keg of beer and the ticket promised an open bar, and last but not least, they hired me to do magic for them. Okay, that's fucking depressing.

Obviously, nobody was gonna pay hundreds of dollars to have something they already owned sold back to him. That would be, that would just be stupid. So, Magnesis members got more of the just their own debit cards remade into metallic versions of themselves. Magnesis members, they got to hang out together. They got to party and they got to take pictures of themselves being exclusive together. And they were also supposed to get access, right?

They're also supposed to get access to the kind of fancy shit that fancy fuckers who want to give their credit card a makeover can afford to go to. And for a little while, Magnesis delivered. Magnesis had access to hot clubs in hotels in New York City. There were parties and even a fashion show, headlined by Rosario Dawson, who I looked up because I had forgotten who she was. And then I promptly forgot again. Oh, okay. Anyway, the trouble was, the trouble was, it was never really clear how a magnetist was

going to make any money. Because remember, this is not in and of itself. This is not a credit card. You supply the card. They just turn the card, you hand them into a metal version of that card. And they charge a fee for that process, but hosting lavish parties and getting access to exclusive events costs a goddamn fortune, especially in New York City,

where not only $250 won't get you bottle service, it won't even cover the fucking tip on bottles. Okay, but I like the idea of a handy piece of metal to stab yourself in the dick if you're someone who orders bottle service any time ever. So that's good. So I guess if you're gonna lose money on every deal, McFarlane figured maybe he could make it up in volume. Except, yeah, that's not a thing.

Tip was also never really clear that he had any volume. Good, because that's just losing more money. Yeah. That's about to apply in your losses. Keep that in mind through the story. Oh my God. It's kind of the 20 million. 20 million.

Jesus. He never figures this lesson out. Dizzy Connise of scale. He's an expert. So in 2014, Magnesesis claimed that it had 1200 members. In September of 16, they claimed to have grown that to 30,000. And two months later,

they made the staggering claim that their ultra-exclusive New York centric metal debit card bro club had a hundred thousand members. To give you an idea of how wonderfully full of the kind of brand centric bullshit double speak mcpharlan was fond of here's an actual quote from mcpharlan describing magnesis quote it's less a calling card and more of an on demand experience platform what would I hear that what he thinks a calling card is.

Right. Right. It's infinitely less a calling card. Right? Yeah, no fun fact. Would you use less and more? You can't technically be wrong. This podcast is less of a squid and more of a nipple piercing.

Isn't demonstrally nice. That's our new timeline. We found it. We should. So McFarland was somehow by all accounts, all of them extremely convincing. And so he was able to ride the charisma train for quite a lot longer than you're going to be able to believe. He set Magnesis up in this beautiful townhouse in Manhattan's West Village. And during the day, townhouse was kind of a wee work space full of young hip idiots pretending that they

were working on the next big thing while probably wasting the bulk of their day updating their insta stories. But by night, the townhouse transformed into a giant douchebaged flat house. When I say flat house, I mean this. Imagine what a West Village superlux townhouse would look like if it was nobody's home and was abused by a bunch of image obsessed over-provaged wannabes, drinking and partying all night, every night. I mean, saying West Village outside in New York and thinking people will know or care about what you're talking about is douchey enough. I mean, what the fuck? is douchey enough and you want the fuck? But if you're thinking that the place would quickly become a destroyed wasteland of busted

windows, damaged appliances, and passed out bros, you'd be right. The landlord sued McFarland and McFarland was forced to settle and leave. Before settling on a more traditional office space, you know, to go to work out, McFarland enlisted the aid of real estate agent Jenny Bapst. Together they looked at a number of different spaces. So they weren't able to piece together the pesky problem of trying to run a commercial enterprise out of a residential zone space. McFarlane did try on successfully to rent a $30,000 a month house asking Jenny is fucking real estate agent quote Jenny,

do you think I would get laid more by models if we get this face? Alright, well, in a more figurative way than he was hoping for, he's gonna be fucking a lot of models before this is over, but not until we take a quick break for a little apropos of nothing. No, no, no, that's worse, that's worse. Hey, Markler, what are you doing? What the universe simulator over there? What are you doing? Oh, hey, I'm trying to take a screenshot of this funny goose look at him

Oh my god, is that a door for what Jesus right? Okay, but I keep pressing control S and nothing happens Yeah, no dude. It's it's all to ask for a screenshot control S just turns up the social internet. So that's not gonna work What's a social internet? It's like if jerking off off made you feel bad and was also bad for your brain. It's like that. Oh. I mean, how many times did you press it there, Berkler? I... I really wanted a picture of the goose, so...

Dude, let me see that kid up, get up. Jesus, Facebook! We had to dump whole simulations over this shit. Come on, man. Why, it's not that bad. It's just a fun way to meet people who go to your college. Yeah, sure. Sure, for now, but trust me, this shit goes bad.

So bad. Why didn't, why didn't you use future site? I, I, I would up, but I didn't want to lose the goose. Because the goose. Okay, it's probably fine. If not, we'll just run a COVID, it's fine. Well, on the whole system, yikes. Yeah, well, you had them for the goose, so, you know.

I mean, come on, he's such a cute goose, right? He's a cute goose, though, he's so cute. What? God, he's adorable. And we're back. When we last left off, Tom was trying to distract us from the fact that he hadn't brought up the thing that this episode was named after yet. So Tom, are we ready to talk about the Fire Festival by H.S.? Okay, all right, that's fair. That's actually entirely fair. Okay, so now we have to talk about Fire Festival. But to do that,

crazily, we are going to have to talk about Jaw Rule. Of course we remember Jaw Rule? No. Of course we remember job rule. No. Okay. Yeah. To the late 90s, early 2000s, I guess he was a thing. I was like 10 and he wasn't much of a thing, but yeah. I make Farland and job rule would become this weird like odd couple lethal weapon combo. You see, what make Farland was working on booking talent for his impossibly not profitable debit card

parties. He was also dating a woman who was into job rule. So naturally, MacFarlane wanted to book job rule. So he went on Instagram and found some other guy named Reggie Muscles, claimed to represent job rule. Yes. Okay. All right.

Admittedly, Reggie Muscles definitely sounds like he's from Jersey. Absolutely sounds like he's from Jersey. Absolutely sounds like he's from Jersey. Okay, so Reggie Muscles from Instagram was like, yeah, give me $500 and I'll set you up and Jaw Rule will play at your party. And so McFarlane's like, cool Reggie Muscles, here's $500 fucking dollars, but then Reggie Muscles just sets McFarland up with a guy named Big Friends. A big Friends like, you know what would really get you job rule?

$500 to me, which Billy pays. This happens twice more. Before McFarland finally gets to a guy named gutter. What? gutter. gutter's like he's given out 500. I want to. I don't know. Hell yeah. Billy, MacFarland clearly thought each of these people was jaw rule along the way. Or at least a little. So MacFarland pays gutter who relays back to MacFarland's jaw rule will play it as party. If MacFarane flies him in on a helicopter. And so, jaw, plays at McFarlane's party because McFarlane bought him a 20 minute helicopter ride.

And I guess one scammer recognizing their fucking brethren somehow they legitimately become best friends. He's looking at Jal Rool's pricing menu. Hmm, helicopter ride comes to the live show, but if I take him ziplining, I get a happy ending. That's what I'm like, cheers. I'm so booking talent, as you can imagine from that story about how hard it is to get B-list has-bins like Joll Rool

is really fucking hard to do, right? So McVarland, he had another idea. I feel like another is damn generous, but okay. That's very fair. That's very fair. He created the idea for this thing called the fire app. The fire app is basically like Fiver meets Thumbtack meets, I don't know, Kesha.

So let's say you're a pretentious fuck with, and you want to book some celebrity to play at your horrible spoiled kid's sweet 16 party. I can go through all the work of paying off ski ball or jump-jump or whoever the fuck gate keeps for cash up. But that kind of thing takes a lot of time. The fire app will let you make an offer on the app directly to cash up, and if they swipe right or whatever,

then you can rent a celebrity and then hunt them for sport or watch them fuck your wife. Or whatever rich people rent other fucking rich people for, I don't know. Those are the two things. I think you know that. This app two things, I think it is. This app is genius as it was, it wasn't gonna pay for and promote itself, and so McFarlane and Jauruil got the idea for the firefuss.

So the idea is like a social network for house plants. Dude, we should throw a rave, man, let's do that! You two do this! Let's get the other sign, huh? That'll be awesome. Let me set you up with our handler, jump, jump. So fire festival was conceived of all McFarland on what amounts to an unexpected layover in the Bahamas was sitting at a bar at a small Bahamian island getting drunk and just bullshitting

with this bartender. He decided right then and there you throw a music festival, but not just a music festival. This was going to be a pop-up ultra chic art commune luxury metropolis of gleaming sunkissed models bouncing their tight Instagrammable bodies to the beat to the biggest celebrity music acts under the tropical island sunlight while America's richest young wannabe is dance beside them, money falling out of their fucking pockets like Sonic's spilling his rings. The festival was going to take place over the course of two weekends and all this shit was going to happen in four months. Yeah. Shouting was going to happen in four months anyway. Something was going to happen in four months anyway. So if you're going to throw a generation defining music and art festival to rival and

a clue to established festivals as poultry and humble as Coachella and burning man, you're obviously going to need to promote this fucking thing. And here I have to admit, McFarland legitimately crushed it. This is actually the only thing he really seemed to do well, really seemed to understand. Billy McFarland was a bad idea machine. Nothing he came up with made any fucking sense, or was possible, or even desirable in any way. But what McFarland understood was how to sell and how to promote and exactly where to do it to reach exactly his target audience. So we hired a social media promotion company called Fuck Jerry.

And then Fuck Jerry put him in touch with Yoke Steve. He called up Joe Ruel, who was sitting right next to Billion of Carlin and there we go, head on the lap. Like, all right, this fire abs dumb. Do you think like he was ever in a marketing meeting with some old school classical marketing, Don Draper types, pitch in the pros and cons

of fuck Jerry versus the fat Jew, and one of them just shot himself, just shot himself in the brain, so he didn't have to see here anymore. I'm not the beans. So he didn't have to feed you anymore. God, I fucking would have. So attendees through a relentless and unspeakably clever social media campaign where bombarded with orange images in their feed meant to stop them in their scrolling tracks. These solid orange blocks would just say shit and small letters like fire festival and

then the detention would build. And once sufficient excitement had been created, organizers started blasting social media with swimsuit models and Instagram influencers promoting the festival. Models and Instagram celebrities like Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner promoted Fire Festival. The musical acts include a Blink 182, I don't know why,

major laser and artists from good music family. And of course, job rule was there alongside all of it, just promoting the shit out of fire festival because nobody screams credibility like job rule. Isn't it, Ruchy Muscle? Wow. You got Sandy Beige's Instagram, celebrities, electronic dance music. Plus, you get to go through airport security to get there.

It's like my archanimesis was trying to get me to tell him the fucking phone. I should have this as well. Jaw rule is the worst spokesperson. You can possibly imagine it because he cannot seem to form anything approaching a coherent sentence. When he was being interviewed on Fox and asked what fire festival was, this is the quote, what is fire festival? This is a word for word transcription of his answer. Quote, whenever you can marry the affluent with the less fortunate you get the birth child which is called hip hop. That was to the question, what is fire? To which the woman on the first page is a weird start to a real simple question.

I'm sorry, I just will give you answer number seven, pull the string. Try again later. So the woman on Fox basically said, what does that have to do with the music festival? She was baffled and Jot Rule clarified by adding quote, hip hop brands things in a different way because we speak to the less fortunate. We are the voices of the have-nots, but we are also the voices of those who came from something very dark, something very, you know, minuscule and minute, being from the ghettos of America, and we're able to make something positive out of that, and that's, that's where the affluence.

So we threw a party for fucking Goldman Sachs brokers. Thank you. This answer, that was in response to their poorer saying, what is fire faster? Someone tripped over his plug at the end of the sentence. Yeah. That's not the end of the affluence. Affluence? Okay.

Him pop is buffering, buffering, buffering. Interesting. Interesting. Okay, you're done. Thanks for joining us, Joe. Cool. But this wasn't just going to be a music festival. You're done. Thanks for joining us, Joe. Rule. Cool. But this wasn't just going to be a music festival. Remember, McFarlane was obsessed with the idea of things

being lifestyle experiences, which is, I guess there's just new corporate double speak for combining a bunch of similar shit together and then selling people a package of stuff they can do. Fire festival promise, they treasure hunt with a $1 million prize. You could rent luxurious geodesic dome villas on the beach. There were private yacht parties to attend. Attendees would be flown in from Miami on private planes.

The food was supposed to be eclectic and fresh and prepared by chefs. The island itself was a private paradise once owned by Pablo Escobar, but now renamed Fire Kaye. And the pictures and videos of it suggested the place was just fucking crawling with supermodels, lazily duck-facing their days away at a state of perpetual sexual dissatisfaction awaiting only your arrival. You can even, if you wanted to, swim with Farrell Island, Pitch. Nice.

What, really? And if the feral hogs happen to wander into your yard of, you know, the GFD's like dome you had there on the beach, you could shoot them with your solid gold AR-15 that they provided for you. The wonderful thing about this story is that the further it goes on, the less bad you feel for the people who got So a side note on the feral island pigs Nothing uninteresting has ever followed that sentence Tom please

So this is a real thing, but it is not at all charming like evidently There is an island that has a community of feral pigs, but these are not cute little like baby pigs. These things are fucking huge. And they do swim, which is that is actually kind of charming. That's pretty fucking charming. It's cute, right? But they also act basically like goats at a petting zoo. They swarm you and they bite you trying to get food.

In the video footage, taking from McFarland is making his promotional videos. These fucking idiots are pouring alcohol into the pigs' mouths you trying to get food in the video footage taken from McFarlane is making his promotional videos. These fucking idiots are pouring alcohol into the pig's mouths as they get surrounded by these enormous fuckers. And one of them bites McFarlane in the nuts. So one point for pig island for that one. If he was looking for someone to bite him in the nuts though in exchange for alcohol, I could have just waited for one of the many Instagram influencers to do it. I'm sure they

Spoilers or taking away a cheese plate from Sarah Huggabee Sanders. There's a lot of ways She's just got duck face taken a selfie over a cheese I want that framed in my house. hashtag cheese. hashtag artisanal fuck you. Sarah, you don't spell out hashtag. You push it. So the fire festival, if it had happened as advertised, it would have been a major coup. The ticket packages range from several hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars Christ.

The musical lineup in the exotic locale combined with the ultra high end accommodations, food, cool shit to do, it would have made fire festival a rich kids paradise, except it didn't turn out the way it was advertised. And in fact, it never fucking could have. Like even if the person running the show wasn't a jackass that couldn't figure out how to turn a profit off of a bunch of trust fund babies want to give me hundreds of dollars to apply for nothing.

Exactly. Some of those ticket prices were in the, they were like $250,000 for 250. Yeah, it was in some of the packages. Fucking nuts. So first, you cannot plan a festival of this magnitude in four months. You can't plan it in six, you can't plan it in 12. One of the best festival organizers in the world was consultant. He thought maybe he could pull this off in 18 months.

Not good at a fire festival tickets. We're already on sale. The fire team had four months to pull this off. They very much would not do. And to be even more clear, everyone told them they would not be able to pull this off. Everyone. Remember the bartender that got McFarlane drunk when Billy came up with the scheme? That guy somehow ends up having an outlandish amount of input and this thing is basically supposed to take place on his island Where he would stand again from it and he told everyone who would listen, which turns out was no one that this was never gonna happen Nobody who has ever planned anything even so large as a birthday party with a clown and a pony Could possibly imagine that an event of this size could in any universe whatsoever

be successfully organized in four months. Jesus, why am I getting Trump Fauci COVID vaccine vibes from this? What the fuck? The thing is this had to happen. And the reason that it had to happen was that all the rest of the shit that I mentioned before, the fire app and Magnesis, these were essentially all Ponzi schemes, none of this shit generated anywhere near enough revenue to cover their costs. So Billy, unwilling to stop playing the role of tech on Genu and lifestyle experienced

douche canoe, again borrowing from one bad idea to pay for another. Those hard to get tickets that Magnesis promised to members, McFarland just bought that shit from StubHub and rack wrapped up enormous amounts of this. That's fantastic. I love this exclusive access. I get with my new credit card, but it's weird that they keep asking me to pretend I'm Dave.

Is it a phrase? Then he began faking documents to prove his valuation and his company's valuation and defrauding investors. It took out massive loans with insane terms of rates over a hundred percent per annum to fund his projects, even as all of them fell further and further in a little bit above the prime.

That's a hair, it's a hair, it's a touch. A deal that he tried to strike with Comcast based on a bunch of bullshit documents fell through and he just lied and told his staff, yeah, we got that fucking money. Selling the exorbitantly priced tickets to fire festival was just a cash infusion to fund his fight bullshit documents fell through and he just lied and told his staff, yeah, we got that fucking money. Selling the exorbitantly priced tickets to fire festival was just a cash infusion to fund his fire app.

When the festival needed more money, he just encouraged attendees to preload their wristbands with the money that they plan to spend that weekend. And then he spent that money to, and for only $450 extra, you can make your wristband into a metal shackle and exclusive metal is for you. Full of money. You laugh, Heath, but it works for Disney. How the hell else are they going to keep the employees there? Do they actually have money wristbands that you like load up at Disney?

Is that a thing? Yeah, and then you put meals on them and you just just go over, and they tell you where to sit, and they just bring you the food, you don't even have to order. It's really good. I'm never going there, I hate everything about it. What it sounds like. Nobody alone goes to Disneyland, that's what you're not going.

Yeah, that's. Oh, Jesus Christ! Holy shit! Oh, holy shit! Oh, holy shit! Goddamn! All right, so the day the festival is here, except I'm still not going to tell you about it because I want to tell you about this island.

First, the island, this was not a private island paradise once owned by Pablo Escobar. They didn't get that island. In fact, they didn't even get a whole island. The dates that Billy chose for fire Festival coincided with the Bahamian Raghada. That's an event described as being bigger than Christmas. So the Bahamas were too busy and fucking too booked out for this shit. There's also not just like islands laying around with massive infrastructure for thousands

of revelers that like no one is using today. What there was, however, was basically a giant field of gravel nearby some low rent sandals resort on an island that he's had an airport. And that would be the actual location. Yeah. At the fire festival, you'll get the authentic experience of walking across a sharp beach.

What hundreds of years at a time. And I'd dull beach. And at the night before the festival, there was just a massive storm because fuck you, that's why. And the shit heap that the organizers did manage to create was made even shit-heapier by winds and rain and flooded. So here's what really happened on the day of the festival.

Well, the fact that you're referring to a multi-weekend festival as day of tells us all. So, first of all, Well, the fact that you're referring to a multi-weekend festival as day of tells us so much. So first, there were no luxurious private planes. The planes were super shitty. Like, these were less than economy junkers, and I actually did watch one of the, both of the documentaries, and I'm one of them. One of the guys pulls the window out.

So it's like, if it gets too stuffy in here, you could always tell the window out. I'm not even kidding. It's amazing. Party goers, when they got to the island, they were hustled into old, hot, yellow school buses and driven to the festival site. The site itself was five miles from the beach. And the site was a huge field of gravel with just some sand, this turnover. These the luxe accommodations they were promised these were hastily assembled leftover fema tents many of which have been destroyed or flooded in the previous night store. They were to give them credit dome shapes though.

The guest's luggage was just fucking slammed together in these huge shipping crates. Lots of people just lost their shit because there was no system to get their stuff to the people. The dome tents themselves had nothing in them and they weren't assigned to anybody. There was just a big field with like a bunch of tents on it. She said go. The bathrooms were all portageons. Again, a lot of these had just blown over the night before so they're tipped over

I'm not a judge you can still pee on that So some of the organizers began to create a system to assign people to tense make Farland himself actually stood on a table in the center of a Thronga people and told them was basically first come first served Lord of the flies time the most basically first come first served Lord of the Flies time. Guess then start running around this big wet gravel field trying to carry fucking mattresses on their heads. They're just sort of like shit laying around and everybody's running around to unoccupied tents trying to call dibsies. All right, so a word on the refreshments. First a sharpened a stick at both the culinary experience,

amounted to a styrofoam container with a couple of slices of wheat bread, a slice of cheese, and a couple of pieces of lettuce just hovering aimlessly around. A decent sandwich. There was very little water, but there was tons of alcohol, much because make pharlem bought and imported two million dollars worth of alcohol that is fucking insane it's even more bonkers though when you consider that the tax on imported alcohol and the Bahamas is and I shit you not 45% what which means they paid 900 thousand dollars in alcohol taxes for an event that was never possible. I got to tell you the story about the water too. They had thousands and thousands of bottles of Evian water purchased and loaded up on these

huge semi trucks, but they didn't account for the custom import fees. The custom import fees on water added up to 175,000 dollars. So and again, I swear to God that I'm not making this up. Bill and McFarlane called one of his executives who happened to be gay and told him that he could save the festival if he drove over to the customs office and sucked the custom officials dick.

So the executive goes home, takes a shower, uses some mouthwash, I thought was a nice touch, and drove over to customs to suck dick for Evian. The Customs guy was just like, What? Yeah, I'm sure you suck a mean dick or whatever, but you can just give me money after the festival. I'm stuck, that's better.

Oh, that guy must have been like, I'm sorry, was your opening bid sucking my dick? I'm sorry, you would've asked about a payment plan. I'm sorry. I'm a stranger. It's awesome. It's like an auction. There's just a guy like second is dick.

Second is dick. I know everyone. Second is dick. Second is dick. You're sliding your open mouth across the table. That's weird. That's weird. This game.

And the best part about that story, by the way, is, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Is this McFarland never had the money for any of this? They weren't able to pay anyone. So of course none of the artists advertised showed up. And this stage, guys, the fucking stage, when McFarland was quoted a price to from scratch, build the kind of stage you would need for this kind of event. He turned the contractor away and instead tried to figure it out himself by just googling how to rent a stage. Guys. How to rent a stage. Nice. So like, imagine a giant gravel field under the relentless baking tropical sun. There's no shade. It's full of half destroyed emergency tents with garbage and boxes and mattresses

stirring around with a half built, janky as fuck stage in the middle of that field. There's barely any workers there and none of them know what to do or who the fuck is in charge. Okay, but you just asked me to imagine Bonarua and that's been going strong for years. The most amazing thing that happened is actually that nobody got hurt. A bunch of these kids tried like hell to get home only to end up literally locked in the airport for hours, waiting for flights to take them back to Miami. The whole thing was a complete fucking disaster and as soon as people got somewhere approaching civilization, thousands of kids all lured him by Instagram, took the social media, and

a massive flood of photos and videos of the utter disaster. McFarland was trapped. He had not pulled off the impossible. The entire scheme came crashing down and owed millions of dollars. He owed money to investors, to lenders, to the thousands of kids he defrauded into buying something he was never really selling. He was arrested by the FBI and suspicion of wire fraud. He posted bond with the metal rectangle debit card. He's trying to swipe his wristband to get out of jail. It's like, this is a working. Those are shackles. You're still in jail. That's not right.

I preloaded my shackles with my commissary money. So now generally, if you're a financial con man after you post bond, it's like a good idea to lay low, but not Billy McFarley. He did not do that. Instead, while he was out on bond, he began marketing exclusive VIP access to events that don't even sell tickets that are not even ticketed events. He tried to sell tickets to the Victoria's secret fashion show, which is invitation only, same with the Met Gala. And again, to be clear, this is what he was doing while he was out on bond. He got re-arrested because he's

fucking stupid. Eventually he pled guilty to wire fraud. He's currently serving six years in prison where he fucking belongs. Bill and McFarland has a toast that I wanna leave you guys with, just in case you were thinking that six years seems like a long time. This toast was given at every opportunity and I can only wonder how he feels about it now

that he has locked away in prison. Here's to living like movie stars, harding like rock stars, and fucking like porn stars. Quickly and with dangerous consequences. That's what they all... Oh, come on. All right, so again, to summarize what you've learned

in one sentence, what would it be? If your Ponzi scheme is collapsing, the only one fleeing to the Caribbean island should be you. Right. All right, are you ready for the quiz from our panel? Well, I'm not familiar with all these fair logs just for fun. Z's Noah. Yeah, she watched you ball. Tom, what's this twat's newest social network called Tom a thinkton B insta sham, bald Facebook, E, bullshwitter, or E, banging out Morse code on prison plumbing. He's selling exclusive access to the TV room by the end of the second week there.

It's got to be E. It's definitely E. Definitely E. All right, Tom, who was the most famous act booked for fire festival? A, see you later. B, lady Kaka. See you. She's a singer. I know. See you. We'll explain the rest of it. Because he left everyone's money. B, lady, lady Kaka. See Matchbox money Who'd he in the blow you for water None of those are good answers I'm gonna go with That is correct and that is the guess. Yeah, you win. All right.

Okay. That was the most famous act. Tom, what was the second most famous act booked for the five us all? Oh, fuck you. Oh, fuck you. I fucking love you right now. He was in.

I'm really happy. I noticed. Was it a Ponzizi top? You're not so good. So good. So good. So good. I'll see. No, it's was a Han ZZ top You're My chemical bromance Dush canoe kids on the block So much better than you know, it's gotta be the thing is it's hard to pick one of them because they were all just Like comparisons so much better than everything

You got it. Yeah, so I'm gonna pick all of them. Yep, just all your All the answer was correct. Who do you have a job? All for one nailing. Alright, so I'm the host and I feel bad for Eli now so he's the winner. And since I'm not speaking to Heath or dumb to heat or dumb. I choose diesel for next week. Oh, that's great. All right, well, for Cecil Eli Heath and Tom, I'm Noah Thangin, you're fraying out well today.

We'll be back next week and by then, Cecil will be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can hear more from Tom and Cecil on the cognitive dissonance podcast. And you can hear more from Heath, Eli, and me on all the other podcasts. If you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a prep, so donation at patreon.com slash citation pod

Or leave us a five star review anywhere you can. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citation pod.com Can't believe we had to COVID the whole sin. I know buddy, but it was for the bastards. Still though. Wanna see if that goose is in the Simward disco, doesn't it, I? Oh, you think he's there?

I think he is. And wearing an all white suit. Array! Hunk, hunk, hunk, hunk, stee-e-e-e-e-e-e. Bye, bye.